Uhhhhm…? Could it possibly take place on a train? she asked. Amusement park? Oh, or Ferris wheel. Park bench. Greyhound bus across the northwest states, or maybe the Badlands? Tree house. Rooftop. Maybe a graveyard? Mausoleum? Movie theater, sometimes you get lucky and nobody else shows. Elevator? Dressing room, during a surprise blackout, or…

Then she smiled. Or in the ocean?

I told her I already had a secret about the ocean. Two. No way of knowing it would have been upwards of four by the time it was all over between us. Back then, at the time, I reconsidered under her watchful eye. Thought about how that one, those two others might never see the light of day, let alone anyone willing to read them.

What, would that work? she asked. How would the ocean read?

I scribbled a few rewrites. Had a glass of cheap Champagne. Took a breath and convinced myself this wouldn’t change her opinion about me.

She was on top and it gave me time to gaze, languish, objectify, mystify, and think my way along her body. Same rote patterns, up along her thighs, ass, touch, reconcile, hips, pressed, and thank you, lucky stars, for moving them, for this moment, tips leading the way along her stomach, curvatures, upwards, hair between my fingers, feeling the sting of her roadmaps against my lower back, and I understood we were drowning.

          I couldn’t tell, didn’t want to overthink, snap a synapse that might leave me less than alert or impressionable, but, damn, this sentence was already trying to kill the conclusion, so she was flipped, sideways, thighs switching, hard grind against each other, and again,

          we were drowning

          a simple pair of individuals so intent on saving each other, that every wet moment dragged us further into the abyss, mid-Atlantic rift for those who like a little calm in their eruptions, crushing against the Pacific rim, rip tides, coral against our bodies, blood in the water, and the sharks began to circle, but this time

          Just. To. Watch.

          And i knew my lungs were filled with water, eyes capped with aquamarine sunlight, refracting off the surface, several fathoms above my head, and this time, each consecutive, unrelated afterwards was filled with her, as she came in, dipped to bring her face close to mine, and we couldn’t have rejected contact any more than this story was created just for the sake of a memory and what do you do when she’s sitting right next to you, some several miles away from the shores of imagination.

…She smiled slightly, watched a school bus go by and said, you never wrote any of that.

Never lived it either, I said.

She nodded, tilted her legs up towards the railing, resting her heels.

I gave myself a second or so to reflect

and went about making those changes.

Keeping certain things to myself.

###

in print:

Amazon.com

or for fucking free in digital

Smashwords.com

so long and thanks for all the pish.